Tuesday Bolts – 3.23.10

Dime on Serge Ibaka last night: “Right after Kevin Durant’s showcase of savage bucketry, it was Serge Ibaka who almost got the Thunder over the hump against the Spurs last night. Throughout the fourth quarter, Ibaka was giving Tim Duncan all kinds of problems on the defensive end: taking charges, poking the ball away, and swatting his shots. And with every big play, Ibaka (10 pts, 8 rebs, 3 blks) would pump up the crowd and had OKC’s arena on the verge of exploding.”

Stein’s power rankings have OKC at eight: “OKC has set the bar so high that you didn’t know how to react when it finally threw in a stinker in Indy. It was only the fifth L in 23 games for a team whose leading rebounder — Durant — averages a whopping 7.5 rpg.”

NBA.com drops OKC to 10th: “Just three of their final 14 games are against losing teams, so Sunday’s game in Indiana was one the Thunder needed. Instead, it was their worst defensive performance of the season. They’ve got the Spurs, Rockets, Blazers and Lakers in town this week.”

SI at 10: “The Thunder can’t afford to take nights off like they did Sunday in a 20-point loss to Indiana, not with fourth and eighth place in the West separated by 3½ games. “We can’t stop what we’re doing,” Scott Brooks told The Oklahoman. “We can’t just say, ‘We’re here. We’ve arrived.’ We have to keep bringing effort and keep finding ways to improve our team.”

Ian Thompson writes about five innovations that could change the NBA: “Tracking the players’ every movement could open up a new world of statistics. “We could use it to analyze ‘contested shots,’ which is one of the most important stats,” Hellmuth said. “The key to that stat is the shooting percentage of the player who is being contested. If Andrei Kirilenko is contesting the shots and the opponent is shooting 20 percent, then you can say he is the best defender; but if someone else is contesting and the opponents are shooting 48 percent, then he’s not being effective.”

Scott Brooks dismissed the Jay-Z distraction: “Several Thunder players attended a Jay-Z concert in Indianapolis on Saturday night before Oklahoma City gave up its most points of the season in a 121-101 loss to the Pacers in a matinee game the following afternoon. But coach Scott Brooks said all the players were back at a reasonable hour and he doesn’t enforce a firm curfew. ”I trust our guys. They’ve given me no reason not to trust them,” Brooks said. ”Our guys are very professional and they really take their jobs serious and they have a lot of pride in our team. If it ever became a problem, which I don’t see it, then I would address it. But no issues with that whatsoever.”

Magic Number Watch: OKC obviously lost, but so did Houston so the number sits at eight for both Memphis and Houston.

@Jax. As much as I love his defensive game, Thabo is a poor shooter under the best of circumstances- To put him in cold, off the bench to replace a better shooter in Maynor, who had been on the floor for some time, was just plain dumb. That he is "the most used inbounder on set plays" strikes me as a pretty weak explaination for taking a significantly better shooter out of the game in a must score situation. Maynor is a PG- I'm thinking he is competent to inbound the ball. I am also of the opinion that if our "usual" strategy in must score situations has us essentially playing 4 on 5 to get the ball in the hoop, that needs to be looked at.

steve H :Putting Thabo in at the end last night was a boneheaded call no matter how you look at it. I still have a lot of love for Coach Brooks and the amazing job he has done, but he is still a rookie coach, and that move last night was a glaring mistake. I don’t care whether he acknowledges it in public, but it would be nice to know that HE, along with his young squad, are learning from their mistakes.

My response to this is covered in the previous thread. But in short, I disagree. Thabo is most often used as the inbounder on set plays.

@Kivmanyeah lebrons 3rd season which was his best, he had 2478 points, KD is at 2052 right now, so he needs 427 points over the next 13 games to outdo lebron, a few more nights like last night should do it, just cant have any stinkers.

Great "Diary" by Bill Simmons (andrew gave one quote above). He always talks about Durant as his favorite non-Celtic and based on his column I think Serge may be his second favorite. A few other good quotes:

"I gotta be honest: We need to see OKC win a few of these physical/sloppy slugfests before we can take them seriously as anything more than a Round 1 patsy." Agreed. Can we win one of these games...please?!?

"Ginobili draws a foul from Serge that gets called two seconds after it happened. The ref was apparently hypnotized by Manu's renegade bald spot and forgot to blow the whistle. Whatever. "

"Crucial note: The secret best TV night of the season will be April 14th, Game 82, when Durant tries to become the youngest scoring champ ever in a home game against Memphis. LeBron plays at the same time, but the Cavs will have clinched homecourt by then and LeBron will probably take a breather that night. So Durant will go into that night knowing exactly how many points he needs for the title. Thirty-three? Thirty-eight? Forty-three? Forty-nine? And they might be playing for a sixth or seventh seed to boot. Wild horses couldn't drag me away from the TV that night."

"Westbrook just stepped on the sideline trying to throw an inbounds pass. This is why you can't pick the Zombies in Round 1. They just aren't ready yet. These things take time. Hell, even Scottie Brooks' suit choices aren't ready yet. Today he looks like he came right from a car insurance convention."

And my favorite:

"The more I watch Curry, I wonder if he should have been the play there. Imagine him with Westbrook, Durant, Ibaka and Green? Good golly. It's also tough to say that someone made the right move when he could offer Harden for Curry or Evans and both Sacramento and Golden State would quickly hang up. And yet … chemistry-wise, and style-wise, it STILL might have been the right pick. Let's give it a year. At the very least, Harden's beard has been phenomenal."

@steve Hwithout harden, not many other options thabo is a 30% 3 pt shooter, maynor and weaver are slightly better but i dunno if you leave it up to them to shoot it either. As a team we are 6th worst in the league from 3 pt range.

Putting Thabo in at the end last night was a boneheaded call no matter how you look at it. I still have a lot of love for Coach Brooks and the amazing job he has done, but he is still a rookie coach, and that move last night was a glaring mistake. I don't care whether he acknowledges it in public, but it would be nice to know that HE, along with his young squad, are learning from their mistakes.

I didn't watch the game last night, but I did watch the highlights on espn.com's front page. Between the dunks and block on Timmay!, Ibaka looks ridiculous in the highlights. Been wondering when Durant was going to bust out a huge scoring night. Figures that it came after he was held to 16.

0:03: Can't say I liked this do-or-die play: Thabo Sefolosha (ice-cold, took one shot all game) inbounds to Durant, who draws the double-team and kicks it back to Thabo ... who fires up a wide-open three that rims out. Huh???? Rebound, Ginobili. I think that play was diagrammed by Mike Dunleavy. Is he in the building? MY GOD, I THINK HE'S IN THE BUILDING! SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM ON SIGHT!